Freedman, Ethan UNI: ehf2124 11/25/25 Columbia University School for Social Work, New York Submitted in partial fulfillment as DEI in Transition - Reimagining Inclusion in Human Resources, within the requirements for Columbia's School for Social Work program and Prof. Desiree Bunch's Human Resource Management class.
Acknowledgements
In introducing the following work, I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory on which we learn, work, and resource from at Columbia University School of Social Work is land of the Lenape and Wappinger indigenous peoples. Let us commit ourselves to the struggle against the forces that have dispossessed the Lenape, Wappinger, and other indigenous people of their lands.
I would also like to acknowledge Professor Prof. Desiree Bunch and their facilitation of SOCWT7123. With Prof. Bunch's lecturers, recommended readings, and my additional thoughts – this piece took form. Moreover, all my peers in class who contributed to discussions and building ideas that related to the present topic. With these acknowledgements, I present my following work.
Vulnerable, yet Vital: Sustaining DEI Initiatives Through Training and Leadership Development
To discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as it relates to organizational vitality means opting to discuss the uncertain, yet pivotal responsibility DEI has in the workplace. Across departments, DEI programs presently face political backlash, reduced funding, and rebranding efforts that recast and conflate inclusion as a sense of culture, belonging, or wellbeing. These shifts reflect an increasingly polarized social context in which organizations navigate competing expectations from stakeholders, employees, and policymakers. Despite this tension, the ethical and strategic necessity of equity in the workplace remains unchanged. Human resource departments that serve as both administrative and moral centers for organizational life are uniquely positioned to sustain DEI efforts when external conditions threaten to erode them (McKinsey & Company, 2023). Among all HR functions, the processes of training, learning, and leadership development hold the greatest potential for preserving DEI, considering these processes shape organizational culture, develop empathic leaders, and embed inclusion into everyday workplaces to truly fruit diversity.
Although policies such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws provide a legal foundation for DEI, they are critically insufficient to drive true cultural transformation (Bauer et al., 2019). In the current climate, many organizations are retreating from explicit DEI rhetoric to mitigate the backlash from dominating groups, funding stakeholders, or governing authority figures. The removal of the "power, race, oppression, and privilege (PROP) framework" from the Columbia School of Social Work's website is a prime example of this dilution (Sund et al., 2025). Hecht (2020) argues that DEI progress requires a reallocation of power and a fundamental transformation of white supremacy based organizational structures, and rebranding DEI initiatives risks diluting the focus on equity and structural change. This effectively makes DEI something organizations implement optionally or implicitly to push their own agenda (Mckinsey & Company, 2023). Defining DEI informs how workplace contexts must go beyond representation or compliance toward frameworks for systemic transformation. With backslides in DEI rhetoric to avoid political backlash, the risk of equity transforming to something symbolically represented rather than structurally supported makes embedding DEI within the organization's learning and leadership a necessity for sustainability over time.
Beyond Compliance: Understanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
To understand the current challenges and opportunities for DEI, it is essential to define its core components. Diversity within any given context refers to the presence of a wide range of human qualities and attributes, both visible and invisible, and is not limited to protected identities mentioned in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (Bauer et al., 2019). If diversity is the result, equity and inclusion are two major pieces of the equation. Equity involves identifying and dismantling the systemic barriers that historically disadvantage certain groups (Hecht, 2020), while inclusion is the practice of creating a sense of belonging and voice for all members of an organization to the point where every individual feels valued, respected, and empowered to contribute their unique embodied perspectives and talents (Alemany & Vermeulen, 2023).
While compliance frameworks like Title VII provide a legal safety net, they are insufficient for true cultural transformation (Bauer et al., 2019). In the current climate, the retreat from explicit DEI language is a significant trend. The removal of the "power, race, oppression, and privilege (PROP) framework" from the Columbia School of Social Work's website is a prime example of this backslide (Sund et al., 2025). By replacing specific social justice language with more generic terms, organizations risk abandoning the structural focus of equity that Hecht (2020) argues is necessary for real change. This makes it imperative to embed DEI principles into the core operational functions of an organization, particularly how it trains and develops its people.
Moving DEI from Policy to Practice: Leadership Roles in Training and Development
The HR function of training, learning, and development (L&D) is central to the long-term success of DEI because it is the primary mechanism through which organizational values are translated into employee behaviors. In a national context where a leading institution like Columbia University School of Social Work removes its anti-racism framework, the role of learning and development becomes a critical line of defense for DEI. It is where DEI moves from policy to practice, as training aligns building skills with broader organizational goals like culture change, leadership development, and employee retention (Bauer et al., 2019).
Sustaining DEI through employee training, learning, and development requires a specific approach to leadership. Petriglieri (2025) identifies three archetypes for developing a leader, the Custodian who focuses on structure, the Challenger on innovation, and the Connector on collaboration. The Connector approach balances organizational positionality with individual autonomy, and is most effective for supporting DEI because it directly links strategic goals with human growth. This model of leadership is reinforced by Caldwell and Okpala (2022), which emphasize that ethical and passionate leadership is what builds cultures of trust, empathy, and collective meaning. Therefore it is key for HR to build leaders who view learning as a moral commitment to the individuals who make up their teams and the organization's values.
When L&D is integrated with DEI, learning itself is reframed as an act of organizational justice. According to Gino and Staats (2015), genuine organizational learning occurs when leaders actively counter institutional biases toward conformity and superficial success. When leadership encourages learning that centers reflection, embraces inclusion, and values diverse expertise, learning is transformed from a mere productivity tool into a powerful equity practice.
The State DEI in 2025: Lessons from Columbia University
The challenges facing DEI are vividly illustrated by the recent events at Columbia University. In early 2025, the university began systematically rolling back on its public commitment to DEI in response to political pressure and executive orders targeting institutions with large endowments and federal funding (Sund et al., 2025). The university's School for International and Public Affairs (SIPA), a leading institution for global public policy, removed its DEI page entirely (Sund et al., 2025). The previous mission statement had declared "the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential to our mission," and were replaced with empty pages representative of a significant shift in institutional priorities that directly impact the training of future global leaders through removing the explicit framework that guides who they should engage with issues of equity in their work (Sund et al., 2025).
Even more striking was the impact on the Columbia School of Social Work (CSSW), which removed its anti-racism mission statement and its PROP framework from public facing websites (Sund et al., 2025). For social work students, the removal of a core pedagogical framework like PROP creates a vacuum in their training, leaving them without the explicit tools to think critically about the systems of power they will encounter in their professional careers. This results in the very language discursively guiding social justice being deemed too controversial for a school dedicated to the field.
The situation at Columbia exemplifies the "DEI Catch-22" described by Horowitch (2025), where institutions are caught between competing political demands. Federal funding often required the inclusion of diversity components in grant applications for many years, but researchers are seeing their grants canceled for following previous government guidelines (Horowitch, 2025). This places leaders in an impossible position, forced to choose between their stated values and their financial stability. For marginalized students and faculty, especially at CSSW, the institution's public commitment to equity is contingent on the political climate. The erosion of trust is a significant setback for the broader DEI movement, demonstrating how even the most resourced institutions can buckle under pressure leading to profound implications in training future leaders.
Embedding DEI: Strategic Solutions for DEI Resilience in Organizations
To counteract the institutional memory loss of pillars like Columbia, DEI must be embedded into all organizational learning instead of being treated as a module (Bauer et al., 2019). Placing equity principles in tandem with leadership training and performance management combines to become a standard of professional competence. Through building a culture of reflection and psychological safety, organizations counter the biases toward action and conformity by normalizing feedback and learning from failure (Gino & Staats, 2015). Practices for translating awareness into action can create a space for employees to grasp at complex issues without the fear of retaliation.
Furthermore, HR must focus on training ethical and emotionally intelligent leaders who can withstand the pressures seen at Columbia. As Caldwell and Okpala (2022) note, "Leadership passion represents the fusion of heart and mind in pursuit of moral purpose." Leadership development should prioritize empathy, humility, and ethical consistency as core competencies. This connector style leadership bridges learning into community spaces, mirroring the social work emphasis on relationship centered practice. While leaders and facilitators actively take on the future, technology expedites change processes, and social workers and organizational facilitators and leaders using AI driven platforms must ensure DEI principles are algorithmically embedded.
Conclusion: Sustaining DEI Through Leadership and Social Work Values
While the sustainability of DEI depends on policy design, it requires more from the daily practices of leaders. When leaders model ethical reflection and equitable decision making, they transform DEI from a compliance task into culture. This leadership becomes the moral infrastructure of inclusion, ensuring that the systems for training and learning embody core values of social justice work. The events at Columbia demonstrate what happens when infrastructure fails, but the alignment of leadership practice and social work ethics is what gives DEI its resilience.
Through embedding DEI within the functions of training, learning, and leadership development, HR professionals can transform equity from a temporary and vulnerable initiative into an enduring organizational ethic that is anchored by social work values and systematic integration of principles into daily practices. The social work codes to lead with human dignity, commitment to social justice, and belief of shared growth, are anchored to the work of effective management and leadership. Whether at the organizational, institutional, or personal level, human resources provides the opportunity to become a manager of talent and an advocate for humanity, proving that the work of sustaining DEI is inseparable from the work of sustaining shared purpose.
References
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Bauer, T. N., Erdogan, B., Caughlin, D. E., & Truxillo, D. M. (2019). Fundamentals of human resource management: People, data, and analytics (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications. 19
Caldwell, C., & Okpala, C. O. (2022). Leading with passion: What it means and why it matters. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 13(4), 1–9.
Gino, F., & Staats, B. (2015). Why organizations don't learn. Harvard Business Review, 93(11), 110–118. 20
Hecht, B. (2020, June 16). Moving beyond diversity toward racial equity: Three actions to take today—and every day. Harvard Business Review. 21
Horowitch, R. (2025, March 19). The DEI Catch-22. The Atlantic. 22
McKinsey & Company. (2023). The state of organizations 2023. 23
Petriglieri, G. (2025, January–February). Three ways to lead learning. Harvard Business Review. 24
Sund, C., Pickering, E., Cosgrove, N., & Massel, R. (2025, February 19). Columbia alters DEI statements on University web pages amid Trump executive orders. Columbia Daily Spectator. 25